The Dreeson Incident(180)

Clara insisted that Lenore and Weshelle must move in with them, at least temporarily, rather than having Lenore try to find a health aide and stay by herself here, where it happened.



Mary Ellen backed Clara up on this. "The EMTs are still here; the ambulance can move you. Wes and Clara can take Weshelle, and I'll send Simon and Sebastian over to bring your things and hers. They can use a dolly from the church."



"There's a crib there already," Wes said. "And a playpen. On the sun porch. Just for grandchildren."



Lenore was shaking her head.



"You should have come the first time," Clara said. "Like I told you to. Or the last time, like I told you to again."



Wes' head came up. First time? Last time?



He learned about February.



"Why in the name of God didn't you tell me then?"



"Because you would have killed the man. Just as right now you are on the verge of killing the man if you lay hands on him. And I did not want to see you hanged before you saw our baby. Well, not to see you hanged at all."



"She's my daughter. You had no business taking that on yourself."



Clara stuck her chin out. "I exercised my best judgment."



Then he learned about March. Faye, Lola, Andrea, Chandra, the protective order that had been in place since Bryant came back. With Clara involved again.



"Dad," Lenore said. "Dad. It wasn't . . ."



Her attempt to intervene didn't do any good.



Chandra? Both Clara and Chandra had known, but hadn't told him?



Wes and Clara were yelling at each other when the ambulance arrived. Still yelling when Mary Ellen left in it, with Lenore, carrying Weshelle herself.



Still yelling when they got home after locking up at Bryant's house.



Just yelling, though.



Mary Ellen sighed and left them to it, wondering how long it had been since anyone in Wes' family had stood up to him. Probably, if the stories she had heard were true, back when his mother tried to talk him out of marrying Lena. Which hadn't worked.



Wes would never have thought of himself as a domestic dictator. And, to give him credit, she thought, if that rubric applied in any way, he had certainly been the most benevolent dictator ever born in the human race. His efforts to elicit a point of view from Lena had been practically superhuman. He had nobly refrained from playing the heavy father to Lenore and Chandra, even when he clearly hadn't been pleased with the choices they made.



But still. He was pretty short on experience when it came to give and take on the home front. Lenore and Chandra hadn't had to fight for their choices. Wes had stood back and deliberately let them make them, which was a different kettle of fish.





Faye looked up from the phone. "That was Mary Ellen Jones," she said.



"Is it true?" Linda Beth asked. "What we heard that Bryant did to Lenore this time?"



Faye nodded. "Bad enough that she's going to have to be off work for several days."



"What do you think? Like your friend Bernadette Adducci says, Andrea, it's really hard to help someone who won't help herself."



"Personally," Faye said. "I think that Lola and Clara were right. She should have gotten out. Not that a protective order would have prevented him from hunting her down at Wes' house. But it sure would have made it less convenient for him to get to her if she had been living somewhere else, with other people around."



"Why on earth didn't she?" Catrina asked.



"She's a masochist?" Andrea suggested.



Linda Beth shook her head. "You have to know something about her family to understand, I think. I'm the same age as her grandparents. Lenore has been surrounded all her life by folks who are pretty nice. Not perfect, but the Jenkinses and the Days, both sides of her family, are basically good people. Lenore and Chandra are both alike, in that way. At some level, they simply expected to be—what's that word in the wedding vows?—yeah, to go on being cherished when they got married. Without even thinking about it. They'd been cherished since the day they were born, after all."



"Maybe you're right," Faye said. "That is sort of what it was like when Lola and I talked to her. When it came right down to it, I'm not sure she actually believed what was happening to her. That Bryant was completely off the deep end. Not even though Lola warned her back in March that he'd gone off it a couple of times before."





Wes said he would set up a folding bed for Lenore downstairs on the sun porch, next to the crib, so she could be with Weshelle. Clara brought sheets, blankets, an extra pillow, all from the linen closet.



While he was doing that, Clara moved her things out of the master bedroom.